CST in China :-)

[Coach Bentz]

Just wanted to say hey to the tribe! I'm in Chengdu for a couple days before we head off to the hinterlands again.

It's been great fun squeezing CST into travel. We're spending a lot of time in busses and planes, so a lot of what Im doing ends up being Intu-Flow/active recovery. But doing pieces of FlowFit® at travel breaks has been loads of fun. even when I make an effort to go off by myself, a member of the group I'm in stops me and wants to talk about what I'm doing or even more fun, when a Chinese person sees me and comes over and we gesture to eachother. They really love the leg swoop

CST sells itself... even at the level I'm practicing. There should at least be two Intu-Flow purchases from the group when we return. I can't imagine what kind of attention you long-timers get.

This isn't the picture I hoped to post, but its the only one that caught the great wall. (do i look nervous? )



I hope you are all doing well. We're heading back up into the mountains for another couple of weeks, which I'm really looking forward to (if none of us die of nausea on the bus getting there... some folks are looking pretty green after an hour of these roads!! Talk about a mechanical spinal wave inducer!)

Brian

[Scott Sonnon]

Breathtaking, Brian!!

[KD Jones]

Dude. I've got to have a copy of that photo. That is just altogether too cool. (I was thinking of taking one of me doing that on my front curb, but somehow it pales in comparison...)

I can only imagine seeing what you are seeing.

Travel safely, experience much (more).

Blessings.

[Jarlo Ilano]

That is really cool man! Safe travels!

[Coach Gostnell]

Wow!! Thanks, Brian.

[Coach Hurst]

Awesome! Swing by Japan on your way back, Brian!

[Ryan Murdock]

Very cool Brian. What section of the Wall did you balance on?

Chengdu is an interesting town. Great food in that part of China as well. Please post more when you get back! I'd be interested in hearing where all you went.

Safe travels.

[Coach Bentz]

Its taken some time for me to organize my thoughts about this particular trip. I believe that taking a journey of any distance or length affects a person in pretty profound ways. This one was no different. What completely astounded me was how practicing CST before and during the journey created a very different experience than I've had before, or was expecting.

One of the first things I discovered in China was that there was a somewhat different idea about privacy and personal space. There's just not a lot of it to be found! And as luck would have it, not a single hotel room we were in (from 4 star to 1/4 star, which in my mind the ratings were directly related to conditions of the bathroom!) had enough spare floor space to practice much more than Be Breathed. This posed a bit of a problem for me, because I really don't enjoy practicing in front of other people, because of how self conscious I get.

Eventually, the desire to not let practice slip overcame the desire to practice alone, and I started moving out into the more secluded hallways and areas. Inevitably, there would be multiple somebody's walking by or standing around, no matter what time of day or night. At first, these were Chinese somebodys, and I figured I could at least provide a little amusement while I practiced FlowFit®. But it didn't take long for the individuals within my group to find me, and before I knew it, the questions and comments started coming.

The first time I was caught, we were up on the Great Wall about 90 minutes outside Beijing. I walked down the wall a ways, and started to notice some tightness in my shoulders. I was quite a ways from the group (I thought) so I started working on standing arm screws. Before I finish, three people walk up and now I'm fielding questions about what I was doing, CST, etc. Somehow, that conversation led to me doing a neck roll right there on the rough stone on top of the wall. Part of it was to demonstrate what that arm screw could be used for, and part of it was me being curious if I could even do it! A poor choice in a white t-shirt perhaps! Luckily, most of the hundreds of years of dust and dirt brushed off for the 4CBD drill shot (above). And, getting caught in that pose earned me a nice long chat about martial arts and CST with a long time tai chi practitioner.

The neck roll on the wall helped me overcome another self-imposed requirement - soft practice surfaces. Within days, we ran out of places with enough carpet to practice on. I had to learn how to practice on stone. At first I found polished marble to practice on, but later, concrete became more common. Twice I had to make do brushing away some space in a gravel turnout on a bus break. I quickly learned that I had more to learn about absorbing shock from those experiences! The concrete also helped me fix a form flaw in my leg swoop. It only took banging my bare heel on the ground ONCE to figure that out. But once I got my leg straightened out, I found I now could do many leg swoops in a row, which thrilled me so much I started practicing that whenever I could.

As we moved through China, more of the group inevitably became aware of what i was doing, and I lost whatever fear I had of practicing in front of other people. I no longer bothered walking away any further than I had to. But now I had to figure out what to do with the attention. This has never really come up for me before, as I've always been a 'hang out in the background' kind of guy, running support rather than leading, acting more of an observer than a participant. Now people are coming up to me even when I'm not practicing, and asking about what they saw me doing, what experiences I'd had with it, did I know if it would help with this physical thing or skill they were working on, could I help them get up these mountains a little easier? Even more remarkable were the things they began sharing with me from their own treasure trove of experience, athletic and otherwise. One of the lifelong athletes described observations within his own training that would sound quite familiar to a CST. I've rarely had conversation open and flow so effortlessly.

The Chinese who saw me had their own fun range of expressions at my unusual behavior. (As some of you know, simply being an American overseas is enough to get a fair degree of attention. ) I certainly heard a lot of giggles, especially at first. But physical activity isn't foreign to the Chinese people, and if their general reaction to me is any indication, they seem to respect that sort of accomplishment rather highly. I lost count of the number of 'thumbs up', smiles while standing and watching, photographs, gripping my arms and gesturing 'strong', etc. Especially any time I started doing a balance drill out on a rock outcropping or some other 'dangerous' place. There were also numerous times I'd be off practicing Intu-Flow, and look up to see an older Chinese person mimicking me for a little while, then smile at me before heading off in their previous direction.

There were many individual moments with the Chinese people that were precious to me. One amusing one was when a porter saw me coming off the Mt Hua with my own pack and gear (most have it ported up for them), grabbed my arms and gestured that I should carry his pole and load back up the mountain! (It was an honor, but he was probably the stronger of us. Some of those porters carry at least 100lbs on their poles. I saw one guy playing a flute while he carried his load!)

One was when I got to do a 'trade' of sorts with a Taoist monk. I performed a short movement sequence for him, and he displayed for me his tai chi form, which was the most graceful performance of that art I'd seen to that point.

Another was a teenage boy in a tiny village in Louguantai, who spoke about 100 words of English, so much of our conversation was gestured or drawn in the dirt. He asked, 'you work?' I said no, but that I wanted to teach someday. "Teach what?" He didn't quite understand the concept of exercise, or why megua (americans) would need it (I was the 2nd foreigner he'd ever met). He'd already indicated to me that the nearby mountains made him thin and strong. Not sure what else to say, I showed him a bit of FlowFit®, and that's when the lightbulb went off. "Oh! You want teach dancing!"

The last involved our guide and translator. I'd observed her playing tai chi and doing push hands with a few members of the group, but other than that I hadn't had much of a chance to interact with her. One night we were staying in a monastery, and I was practicing out in the temple courtyard, the only available flat, open space. She came over and after a little conversation, asked me if I could please repeat the leg swoop, which I did (a lot, in the course of trying to explain it) Then she asked if I could teach her how. She got through the first progression fairly well. She did okay with the second, but her hands were starting to ache with the stone practice floor before she got it down.

Before I got up to take a break, my qigong instructor came over and asked if i could show him too, and we went through the same two progressions. Just as he left, a third person came over! By then I was completely swooped out, and hustled over to the table. A fourth person asked me about the swoop this time, and I finally understood the interest. He explained that this movement used to be a part of his family's dance (Russian Jewish, and as i found out later, so was my instructor) but that no one in his family could do it anymore, and he was grateful to see that it could be recovered. That felt really neat, to be able to play some part in the return, even unintentionally, of some lost part of their heritage. But that evening also set up a series of conversations with our translator that I have come to cherish. We met as athletes, and became fast friends.

There was one other interaction that I'll share that affected me. On the third day of our stay on Mt. Hua, I climbed up the mountain from the cave I was staying in, to the monastery at the top. Six hours climbing in the rain didn't dampen my spirits but it drained me, and I got a nasty head cold. The following morning, I stumbled out of bed and having the energy for nothing else, I walked into the (then abandoned) courtyard and headed for the small patch of sunlight. It was warm enough in the sun to remove my shirt, and I began practicing Intu-Flow. As usual, within minutes, there were a dozen people in the courtyard, and now I'm really acting unusual, half naked AND moving strangely! I did my best to ignore everyone else and concentrate on what I was doing, but before I finished with the spine, I had a visitor. A thin Chinese teenager introduced himself, then said "I think you are very strong. May I take a picture with you?" I had no idea what he saw. I felt bloated from the fare at all the banquets, my head felt like exploding, and I wasn't even performing any tricks this time. I didn't argue with him, though, and agreed. Then he asked, "Do you mind if I get undressed?" (It took me a second to remember, English is not his first language, he's only gonna take off his shirt... right?) We did a quick muscle pose together and he went on his way. I spoke with a friend on the tour afterwards, trying to make sense of it. She reminded me that not every culture responds to a person's shape the same way that Americans do.

But afterwards is when it just struck me, that no one has ever asked to take my picture for that reason. There were a lot of 'never happened before's on this trip. I started to take stock of everything that had happened on the trip to that point. All the conversations, all the attention. The path of physical culture began to appear, in practice, as a way of actually doing something I've always enjoyed the idea of, really reaching people, powerfully, even viscerally. I've always 'tried' to share interesting ideas and philosophies that I'd encountered with others, but most of the time, I'd just end up in a debate with them, or it would remain simply 'an interesting idea.' However, it appeared that there may be ways to share ideas that are effortless. I was only out there doing my practice, doing what I was interested in and passionate about, and found myself approached by open minds... that sometimes were open for more than what I was actually doing. (Isn't that what John Brookfield does with his ministry?)

All I had to trade for that experience, besides practice time, was some self-consciousness, to get out of my own way.

Physically, I felt like I was walking as tall as I ever had, without trying to, and walked more slowly, more easily and more confidently than i could remember. My sense of myself had totally shifted, certainly my fear of heights has abated. I used to look down sheer cliff walls by lying down and crawling up to the edge. Now I was walking up to them and looking straight down as if that were normal for me, and listening to others vocalize their nervousness for my safety. But I 'am' safe. I know where my feet are, and they are connected to the stone, to the earth. (and even as I painted a house today, they were connected to the earth through the ladder, which I can visualize as an extension of my feet. Maybe I am only afraid when I lose that felt connection?)

This trip was certainly not all about CST, but it was an incredible, inseparable part, that played out beyond my wildest expectations, and in ways i'm sure I've barely begun to digest. My heartfelt thanks go to the tribe, many of you have played rather large roles in getting me there. Especially you, 'Hollywood', braving LAX not once but twice for me! (with the BEST welcome sign too!)

[Kathryn Woodall]

Brian,
Thank you for sharing your story! It is wonderful to hear someone talk about his growth and how that opened up channels to other people. Great job getting out of your own way!

[Jarlo Ilano]

That was really nice Brian!

Thank you so much for this wonderful testament of your spirit.